Catalog - Myanmar Film Treasures - Memory! The International Film Heritage Festival

Three extraordinary classic films from Myanmar's filmic past. The Cinema Association staff was supported by Okkar Maung, a maker of documentaries whose archive research at Yangon School and his own relationship with the Mya Ga Naing directors helped to track down survivors of the movie and identify appropriate printings for conservation.

Okkar had the chance to participate in a range of trainings at the International Federation of Movie Archives (FIAF). In the Myanmar Movie Treasures section, the next movie is another Tin Maung classic, the 1953 Yatanabon (Treasure Trove), a 19th c. tune drama from Ellen Wood's novel "East Lynne", which had become so famous that it was revised in a wide range of different forms worldwide, from shows to theatricals.

Burmese writer Shwe U Daung has written an adaption that formed the foundation of Yatanabon. Returning this movie to the big picture took a different approach, as the Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) in cooperation with the Czech National Archives took over the work. Printed copies of the films were taken from the MRTV archives and supplemented by a copy which has been kept in the Czech Republic since 1957, where it was shown at the Karlovy Vary Filmfestival.

It is the first direct Yangon Movie School restorative project and will hopefully become an on-going attempt to preserve the sparsely preserved Burmese movie theatres. Supported by the Goethe-Institut, the renovated movie was shown at the Wathann Filmfestival in 2012 and had its first screening at the 64th Berlin Filmfestival in 2014.

It may be appropriate that the first encounter of many viewers with the classic films of Myanmar's nationwide cinemas is a movie about the need for the conservation of culture, art and physics.